November 27 2011, 12:39 AM

Skyrim

Skyrim came out a couple of weeks ago. I’m thoroughly enjoying the game when I’m not being jolted out of immersion when I see the water clipping into the ground or that the game still suffers from many of the things that Oblivion did, such as terrain texturitis and closeup texturitis. Nor the fact that the Dunmer look like they have funky Romulan eyebrow ridges that I fully intend on fixing when the CK finally comes out, since even in Morrowind they didn’t look like that. Oh, and not to mention the x10 factor of game breaking bugs, such as Esbern’s voice bug or the Season Unending/Civil War bug for example. It seems almost as if Bethesda was so much in a hurry to get Skyrim released on that 11-11-11 date they skipped beta testing, and opted to rely on patches.

Considering how much they left in Oblivion for the Unofficial Oblivion Patch to fix, that makes me rather nervous. The UOP suffers from some bugs of its own, one where if you do a certain non-quest the Oblivion gate map markers will disappear. What will happen with Skyrim’s more advanced, more complicated system?

At any rate, they have at least improved the stealth system, making it actually possible for thief characters to be a viable option, something I’ve always been disappointed with in Oblivion. Also, mages are far more viable as well, and with a mod that tweaks things just a bit, are really very awesome. My first character is something of a combination of the two, like a Nightblade, so naturally she joined the College of Winterhold. During the Magic Anomaly attack, she shot lightning bolts from her fingers and destroyed all who stood in her way, along side of her college mates, who preferred more unusual forms of magic. Such as raising undead chickens.

One of my more favorite aspects of the game is sneaking around and sniping off targets with my Daedric bow. Bows actually do a decent amount of damage, and with enchantments, can actually kill someone in one hit, particularly of you have the perks to increase basic bow damage and sneak attack.

I’m a little disappointed with the whole enchantment system, on the other hand, as there’s even less to enchant in Skyrim than in Oblivion, and far far less than Morrowind. There’s also only one enchantment per item unless you have the Two Enchantments perk. To get a decent enchantment you practically have to be wearing a full suit of Fortify Enchantment gear, or find an Epic Item somewhere and skip enchanting at all.

Oh, here’s a video of an interesting way of completing Wolfskull Cave using only a bow and some luck.

I don’t know, there’s something satisfying about sneaking up on someone. It’s gotten better since Oblivion, but still, there’s times where I would be creeping around downstairs and some idiot upstairs had x-ray vision that could see me steal that loaf of bread. You can put a bucket on a shopkeeper’s head and steal them blind, but if the door is closed and they’re on the other side of it, you still get caught. Such inconsistency.

I may be biased due to my love of the classic-yet-almost-unheard-of Thief series, though. Now that is a stealth system I wish they would have used, it was one of the best, even in Deadly Shadows where the NPC AI was of questionable design (I mean, you can have the Pagans and the Brotherhood go at it in the streets and you’d be watching from a rooftop, the guards would find the body and still blame you. I mean what?).

Despite all that, I think the most value in Skyrim probably lays outside of the Main Quest and the dragons, so much hyped and yet it falls rather short. I was expecting more of an epic battle, kind of like the end of Oblivion, but no, it’s more of a personal quest over anything, and not a particularly epic one, either. That title would go to Planescape: Torment in Epic Personal Journey. I had to say I was a little disappointed with that. If I think about it, it really seems like a side quest more than anything. There’s only so many dragon attacks you can have before it gets boring.

And one last thing. Skyrim’s full of those damned Nords. They were annoying in Morrowind and Oblivion, but now it takes new heights. I can’t understand why anyone would even consider joining the Stormcloaks, especially if their character is an elf. The character of Ulfric seems to not grasp anything of what is going on with the Empire, being so obsessed with worshiping Talos and freeing Skyrim from the Imperial “tyranny,” he fails to see where the Imperials don’t like the Thalmor any more than they do. He fails to see that the Imperials may be planning another war, one that they might win, and everything he does in Skyrim negates that. One of the characters in Solitude said something to the effect that “Talos worship may be banned, but Tiber Septim was a man once, and this was his Empire.” and implied Ulfric was interested more in power rather than freedom. Because of this, I find Ulfric to be completely hypocritical. To worship Talos, or to preserve what he had created in life. What would have been better to honor him with? Ulfric has a lot of petty vanity and a severe lack of foresight.

Just got to keep my fingers crossed and hope the next game is in the Summerset Isles with all that delicious politicking and spying. And with the descriptions of the cities… That would make a truly epic game.